During Jonathan’s birthday week last September, the volunteers from Haseltine Lake hit all three! They worked on community farms in Bristol and London. Jonathan would have loved this – a great project in the fresh air. The day concluded with a celebrity cake in honour of his birthday. What a wonderful thing to do – Jonathan loved birthday cake! Thanks to everyone for such a fitting commemorative gesture.

Read more about the day

Some time ago as a commemorative activity we decided we were going to create some volunteering activities around Jonathan’s birthday week. We wanted to do something that honoured and remembered Jonathan’s big heart and personality. What better way to do this than taking a step back from the office, get some fresh air and put our best efforts into something different for a day.

We opted for volunteer days over two city farms. Both of which were eager to have us, as our help would enable the Farms to do major improvement works which otherwise would not be financially or practically viable.

In Bristol we visited Windmill Hill City Farm and in London it was Stepney City Farm. Both of which are community projects that are welcoming, offering a green and quite unique space in city centres as a place to escape. Our volunteers got involved in team tasks such as painting the stables to make way for new farm animals, helping make raised beds for new garden areas, sowing seeds, planting bulbs and generally cleaning these areas up for all who visit the community farms.

These activities couldn’t have been further away from our normal day-to-day work lives and provided a mini-get-away from emails, patents and meetings. We worked hard on the day and got quite a different sense of accomplishment in our team building activities. After a sunny afternoon of manual labour for a great cause we got stuck into some celebratory cake.

Not only did the community farms really appreciate our time and effort, but all those involved gave positive feedback and enthusiasm to do it again.

It’s safe to say that we don’t mind getting our hands dirty and would love to keep this going on an annual basis, never forgetting the celebratory cake in honour of Jonathan’s Birthday.